


Part Two: Troy and Abed

by thingswithwings



Series: Some Companions the Doctor Never Had [2]
Category: Community, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Adventure, Chromatic Character, Future Fic, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven and Ace hang out with Troy and Abed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Part Two: Troy and Abed

One day, somewhere between a low-gravity planet with sentient plants and a little village outside Dannenberg in 1836, Ace meets Abed and Troy.

"Uh, hi," she says, when two boys she's never seen before wander into the TARDIS console room mid-flight.

"Hey," says one of them. The other one holds up a hand in greeting.

The Doctor is busy piloting and doesn't look up from the controls. "Oh, Ace, have you met Troy and Abed? They live here sometimes, I'm not sure when."

Ace has been travelling with the Doctor a while now, and knows better than to question that last statement. She holds out her hand to them. "Which one is which?"

The one on the left smiles broadly and takes her hand. "I'm Troy," he says. "This is Abed."

"What does the Doctor mean, that you live here sometimes?"

Abed shrugs. "We don't know. We just show up occasionally. Usually we're asleep, which probably indicates that we're dreaming, but then on the other hand we both remember the dreams when we wake up, and if I've learned anything from TV it's that you probably shouldn't assume that things are dreams if you're sharing them with other people." He widens his eyes and gives her a serious look. "That's a good way to get yourself killed in a horror movie. Or really freaked out in a scifi movie."

"Yes, yes, of course you're not dreaming," the Doctor calls from where he's standing by the console and scowling at a doohickey. "I've told you before that the two of you are some kind of bizarre quantum event." He looks up to give them a squinty eye. "I've no idea how you slip through the TARDIS's shields, otherwise."

Abed reaches out a hand and touches the wall reverently, in the same way that Ace has seen the Doctor do it. The same way she's done it herself, sometimes, when the Doctor wasn't looking. "I just think the old girl likes us," Abed says.

"So, do you want to come with us?" Ace asks. "We're going to – "

"Berlin, 1923," the Doctor answers. "And they can't come."

"Why not?" Ace strides right up to the Doctor, hands on her hips. "I'd like to have someone along for the adventure now and then who's a bit more human."

The Doctor looks up and smiles, then touches Ace's nose sweetly. "No, you wouldn't."

"Sometimes I would!"

"They can't come anyway, I told you. They're a quantum event. If they stepped outside the TARDIS door they'd turn to, I don't know, mulch or something." This last with a dismissive hand wave as he turns back to the console.

"Yeah, we mostly just hang out here," Troy confirms. "Because of the whole – " he gestures vaguely at the door, "mulch issue."

"There's lots of stuff to do, though," Abed says. "Did you know that there's a saltwater swimming pool and a freshwater swimming pool?" He points down the corridor they just came out of.

Troy nods enthusiastically. "Abed likes to float."

"I've never seen the saltwater swimming pool," Ace says. "Doctor, how long before we're in Berlin?"

The Doctor is pressing buttons furiously. "I'm having trouble hitting Berlin, actually. And Germany, for that matter; I think we're headed for Hanover instead. Germany as such hasn't even been invented yet."

"I'm going for a swim, then. Call me if we ever land." She turns to Troy and Abed. "I'm Ace, by the way."

"Cool name," Troy says. Ace grins at him.

-

"I have some questions for you about time and space travel," Abed says, as soon as they're floating along the surface of the water. "For one, how is it possible to move a vessel this size – "

"Oh, it's bigger on the inside," Ace says. She's staring up at the ceiling, where there's a mural of mostly merfolk and dragons and such. She has a sneaking suspicion that the Doctor painted it himself.

Abed rolls over to stand up in the pool and shakes the water from his ears. He's kind of small, skinny and vulnerable in swim trunks; Ace likes that. "Bigger on the inside," Abed repeats.

Ace flips over too, dog paddles a bit. "Yeah. You've never seen the outside, have you? It's beautiful, this blue box, a police box like from the fifties, I guess. It's no bigger than a phone booth, and then you step inside, and here you are."

"I see," Abed muses. "So if the ship is configured on the principle that spatial dimensions can be folded – "

"You'd really have to talk to the Doctor about that," Ace interrupts.

"He's typically not very forthcoming." Ace laughs; she can imagine that he wouldn't be.

"Cannonball!" Troy yells, and throws himself into the pool with a giant splash. Ace sputters and spits out salt water.

"Fresh water pool next?" Abed suggests.

"And then the jacuzzi," Troy agrees. He's kind of muscley, arms hard and belly soft; Ace likes that, too.

The Doctor takes his time getting them to what does, in the end, turn out to be Hanover; Ace finds that she doesn't mind too much.

-

"Pssst, Ace," Troy says, poking his head out of a corridor. "Come quick!" Ace glances around; she's just gotten out of the shower and was headed for bed, presuming that she can find her bedroom again having found the bathroom.

"What is it?" she whispers back. She hasn't seen him or Abed in what feels like a couple of weeks.

"Cross-dimensional blanket fort," Troy confides. "It's gonna be amazing."

Ace glances down; she's already wearing her soft flannel pajamas, after all. "Have you guys found the room yet that's filled with stuffed animals?"

Troy glances at her, surprised. "No," he says slowly. "Uh, that sounds awesome. Where is it?"

She grins, and runs off ahead of him. "I'll show you," she calls back, over her shoulder.

"Are there stuffed tigers?" Troy shouts, running as fast as he can behind her. Ace laughs, full up to the top with the sheer joy of it.

-

She doesn't see them around all the time. It's not like they're the Doctor's lodgers or anything. But every now and then, when the Doctor is preoccupied with something else and she finds herself at loose ends in the TARDIS, Troy and Abed will show up with some alien board game or a new room they've found, off the atrium and past the library, and whisk her off deep into the heart of the ship to play with them.

"How long have you two been coming here? It seems like you know this place pretty well," Ace asks them one time, as they wander out near the Cloister.

They exchange a look. "We don't know," Troy says. "Our dreams aren't in order."

Abed nods. "We wake up feeling pretty fuzzy. But we've been here lots of times, for sure. We generally just run around and entertain ourselves. The TARDIS changes her configuration all the time, so we're always finding new stuff."

"Yeah." Troy smiles fondly. "Remember when we found the movie theatre?" Abed nods.

"There's a movie theatre?" Ace can't imagine what Time Lord films might be like, but she wants to find out. The Doctor doesn't ever talk about his people.

"Time Lord movies are some weird shit," Troy says, confirming her suspicions. "C'mon, we'll show you. Uh, if we can find it."

"Ace," Ace says, and hooks her arms with theirs. They're both warm, soft, alive; Abed's elbow pokes into her side and Troy sometimes steps on her foot and she's glad to have them here with her, here to navigate the strange shifting corridors and get lost alongside her. She has the Doctor as her travelling companion outside the TARDIS doors, but in here, where she used to feel most alone, now she has them.

-

"So, are you human, or what?" Abed asks her one time.

"I'm human," she says. "What about you, are you human?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Well, all right then."

"Cool," Abed agrees.

From around the corner, where he's making them all brownies and smoothies in the little kitchenette, Troy yells, "I _told_ you! Just because someone's British doesn't make them an alien, Abed."

Abed wiggles his eyebrows at her. "Can't be too careful," he says, and gives her a wink. She winks back solemnly.

-

Ace finds, at certain moments, that she wants to kiss Abed. She finds, at other moments, that she wants to kiss Troy. She figures it's best to wait until they're both there at the same time, and until she feels both ways at once. It takes a while, but she doesn't mind; she's busy off adventuring with the Doctor by day and playing with them by night and it's nice to have one thing in her life that moves slowly, at its own gradual pace.

One evening, while they're watching one of the Doctor's bizarre Time Lord films – Troy's favourite, the one where dinosaurs attack the Gallifreyan Senate and Rassilon has to fight them using temporal logic – Ace decides the moment is pretty close to right.

"I just don't get why Rassilon's shirtless," Abed says, chewing on popcorn. Ace reaches left and takes Abed's hand with her left hand. He holds it loosely without comment.

"I think it's mostly because he's totally ripped?" Troy guesses. "And he wants to impress the Senate with his sweaty delts?" Ace reaches right and takes Troy's hand with her right hand. He does a swift triple-take and jumps a little, then notices that she's already holding Abed's hand.

"Uh, wow," Troy says.

Abed manages to tear his gaze away from the movie and look at them each in turn. "So, are we having that threesome now, or what?" he asks. "Because I can pause the movie."

"I think it's about time, yeah," Ace says, feeling the moment coalesce around her. She stands, lets go their hands, then turns and grabs them up again, tugging them up towards her. They follow slowly, Abed because he takes a moment to pause _Rassilon IX: Attack of the Beasts From Beyond_ and Troy because he stumbles on his own feet and hesitates. It's funny, Ace thinks, how the smooth ones are always shy and the shy ones are always smooth.

"Oh, come on, Troy," she says, exasperated. Sometimes she sounds like the Doctor now, even to her own ears. "What's the matter? Don't you like me?"

"No, I do, I just – " he glances at Abed, who's stilled, cocking his head to one side like he's waiting to see what will happen next.

"Oh," Ace realises. "You two don't – "

"We've never." Abed says.

Ace shrugs. "Well, you can, if you want." Troy seems unsure, so she adds, "that's the good thing about travelling in the TARDIS." He meets her eyes, and she grins at him. "Anything's possible. You can do whatever you like, and no one will mind."

She watches Troy as he makes his decision, and when she thinks he's made it, she leans over and kisses Abed slowly. He kisses her back with precision and enjoyment and good fellow-feeling. She feels a spreading warmth in her chest.

When they pull apart, Troy's eyes are wide. "Okay," he says, and he kisses Abed too, cupping a hand under Abed's jaw and opening his mouth for him. Ace watches as they kiss, for the first time, like old lovers sharing a private joke. She decides that she loves them a lot.

"Oi," she says, eventually. "Break it up. My turn again." They do, blinking slowly, and Ace steps in to grab Troy in her arms, spin him around and plant one on him. His hands grip at her leather jacket, which feels good, feels satisfying.

"So, _now_ we're having a threesome," Abed says, and he sounds doubtful, worried.

"I think we are," Troy says, and Ace is glad to see that his old confident grin is coming back.

"The only question," Ace says, slinging an arm around both of their shoulders and walking them out the door, "is whether we want to use the room with the bouncy floor, or the room with all the stuffed animals – "

"Or the room with the pies," Troy says dreamily.

"I'm sure the TARDIS will come up with something," Abed says, patting the doorframe as they go by.

-

Ace travels with the Doctor a long time, a very long time indeed, until sometimes she's not sure she remembers exactly what her mum's face looks like or which way you turn on the High Street to get to her favourite arcade or whether she ever wants to go back to Earth. She doesn't really – age, much, and neither do Troy and Abed, and of course neither does the Doctor, but she feels the time all the same. She thinks she might be getting better and better at that, in fact, at feeling time like the Doctor does.

"Did you bring them here for me?" Ace asks the Doctor once. "Abed and Troy, I mean. To – keep me human. Did you make friends for me?"

The Doctor sighs in that put-upon way that he has. "Ace, I've told you before, strange things happen in time and space – "

"Doctor." She's been travelling with him a long time. "Tell me."

He glances at her ruefully and smiles. "So grown up," he says, with a light touch to her nose. "Ace, there _are_ sometimes people who can dream their way onto the TARDIS. Not a lot, but a few. These two – they did it together, which is even more rare." He pauses.

"And you let them come," she fills in. "Most people, you keep them out, but you let them come."

"Well, I thought you might like them," he says dismissively. "They're very . . . " he trails off.

"Troy and Abed," she supplies.

He smiles at her. "Just so. Troy and Abed."

She puts her hand on his face, pulls him to her, puts her mouth on his briefly.

"Thank you," she says.

-

Troy and Abed get older together, and when they're in the real world they don't talk much about the dreams or the TARDIS or their shared imaginary girlfriend-slash-friend-who's-a-girl, but on the mornings after they've found themselves back there, on those mornings they hold on to each others' hands firmly, holding on to the feeling of that place, the wide-open possibility that Ace introduced them to. When they dream of the TARDIS they're both twenty-one again, eager and playful and young, and so on the mornings after they've been there they hold on to that feeling, too.

The day of Abed's first film premiere, Abed's throat feels closed up and his skin feels hot and he feels his eyes getting wider and wider until, just before they hit the red carpet, just when he thinks there's a better than even chance that he might pass out dramatically as soon as he gets out of the limo, Troy starts humming the theme song from _Rassilon VII: Tomorrow Never Arrives_ , and it surprises Abed so much that he laughs, and when the car door opens he's calm and cool and collected again and Troy is winking at him and nudging at his shoulder and he steps out ready to face the world.

The day Troy's mom dies, Abed does his best to hug him even though he isn't really sure how to initiate hugs, and he knows it's awkward but Troy clings to him anyway, so it must be working, at least a little. "Time is relative," Abed whispers, and tries to make Troy understand that he means it, that it's really true and not just something people say to make other people feel better: "she'll always exist."

The day they get married, Troy puts a picture of Ace, a carefully-drawn sketch rendered painstakingly from quickly-fading memories, into his pocket. Abed gives him a little half-smile when he sees, and adjusts Troy's Star Trek uniform fondly.


End file.
